SOURCE: "The Depth of Faulkner's Art," in The New York Times Book Review, July 13, 1952, p. 3.

A highly respected American literary critic, Kazin is best known for his essay collections The Inmost Leaf (1955), Contemporaries (1962), and particularly for On Native Grounds (1942), a study of American prose writing since the era of William Dean Howells. In the review below, he offers a mixed assessment of William Faulkner: A Critical Study, faulting Howe for failing to fully assess Faulkner's Southern background.

Although Faulkner seems at last to have come into his own, Irving Howe's book [William Faulkner: A Critical Study], the latest of several recent critical studies, makes one wonder how much of Faulkner's new prestige is due to the lack of competition rather than to our own clear and positive realization of his originality. As Mr. Howe says, he is now "the most impressive living American novelist"—and no wonder, considering...